Hot Coffee and Green Tea
by M-Maltesers
Summary: An introspective ficlet.


Hot Coffee and Green Tea: Kaiba Seto's thoughts about a familiar sort of scene. I was going to call this Hot Coffee and Lukewarm Tea, but it sounded like something you'd hear at your grandmother's house. Anyhow, I guess you could say this fic was born out of my strange feelings of nothingness. A series of introspective scenes on the dynamics of relationships, kind of… Unlike all my other fics, it's written in the present tense, from a first-person perspective (Kaiba).

By the way, Kaiba's thoughts are full of contradictions... >> Probably because I wasn't really thinking straight when I wrote it... just babble.

**Hot Coffee and Green Tea**

(S)-

"Just green tea…"

I sweep my coat under me as I take my usual seat – the one by the window. With its view of the street, this is where I always sit.

To anyone who passes by, I must just look like a discerning watcher. A people-watcher.

Perhaps it's true. But I've never been one to believe that a person's face can tell all about them.

But to a certain extent, perhaps I'd call myself a person-watcher.

As I see him looking flustered and hurrying across the intersection, his jeans slightly too long for his legs (I like to joke that he'll never grow into them), and his perfectly perfect hair, I know things are just the way they're supposed to be.

The waitress carelessly drops my tea in front of me.

She's given up on ever discerning my reasons; my mentality. My sanity. At first she wanted to lecture me: to remind me that even kings must keep manners, even in their own courts.

She just lets me be, because she's given up interest in anyone else's life but her own.

And as I slide my fingers carefully around the teacup, and start to feel the heat permeating the porcelain cup, I realise that I was exactly the same.

Another quick glance towards the intersection tells me that the door should open in a moment; that at the moment the door opens, the hint of a smile on my face will disappear, and that the man who sits down opposite me will order his usual, hot coffee, and ask for an ice cube.

He doesn't care that every week, the same thing happens.

He doesn't care that each week the waitress sighs and scribbles a note on her pad of paper.

He doesn't care that each week, there are more blue inky lines at the top of her pocket.

He doesn't care about anything.

Still, he comes.

I come.

We sit.

As the waitress gives a slight roll of her eyes and moves back towards the counter, he puts both elbows on the table and rests his chin in the palms of his hands. I can feel his eyes staring at me, seeing into me, rather than through me – like so many other people. He doesn't analyse me, he's just insanely curious. He couldn't care less about me – what I want, why I want, why I crave.

He just accepts me at face value.

And it suits us both perfectly.

"You're late," I comment. Unnecessarily, since it's become my opening comment each time.

A bewitching grin. And a shrug. "What's it to you? Do you have someone else waiting for you?"

He doesn't betray anything. Not even his words. If he really wanted to ask me that question, he could have done so the moment he sat down. If I'd wanted to answer it, I wouldn't have waited until he'd asked.

I almost snort in response, then, remembering, I give a shrug.

He looks a little different today, but I can't quite place it. Maybe it's just my imagination, since from a distance he seems the same.

Closer, if I were to peer at him, I would notice the unusually brightened cheeks. It's not from the cold. He wouldn't have walked. He's too lazy for that.

We both are.

I never ask him how he is.

He never asks me either.

Because we couldn't care less about each other.

I come here because it fulfils my own selfish desire. And he too, does the same.

"So…" he trails a finger lazily along the table's shining surface. "How is it Seto?"

I shrug. When he asks how 'it' is, he means my life. He means the endless working hours and the endless piles of paperwork. These precious hours are almost all the time I can spare away from my office.

In this at least, we're similar.

In everything else, we're different.

"Did you finish reading it yet?"

'It', yet again.

"That book?" He shrugs. "I realised after the first sentence that I wasn't ever likely to need its advice, so I found something better to do." He pushes the book back towards me on the table. His fingers linger on the cover before he pulls them away, and I find myself picking up the book again.

"What better do you have to do?" I know I must sound amused.

Irritation flashes across his face. "Do you want the list? Bureaucracy is incompetent. Why does it exist?"

I shrug, knowing fully that he won't bother to inundate me with his problems anyway.

He begins to twirl his finger in his hair, staring up at the ceiling with a look which seems beyond comprehension. After all, anger and affection are almost at opposite ends on the emotional spectrum.

His emerald green eyes are staring into me once again. My own eyes stare straight back at him. For a moment, we feel as though we're facing each other, alone in the world, but together somehow.

Together; and alone. My life seems so full of these paradoxical situations. I don't try to understand him.

I never know what he's thinking. It's as though it's a constant game for him. He likes to elude me, and for the moment, I've given up chasing him, much preferring for him to come to me as he likes.

And sometimes I think, he must not understand me as well as he imagines.

(S)-

I know when it's time to leave.

"By the way, you should really try this sometime." He slips a book across the table, and we both understand perfectly.

The moment before he stands to put his hands into his pockets, I feel the slightest touch against my calf, and I imagine it to be his own leg. A warm tingling feeling rushes up my body, my heart beating quickly in my chest.

It's not about the coffee, with its steam rising and disappearing.

It's not about the lukewarm tea, or the warm sensation which travels from the palms of my hands through my body.

It's that thrill the moment he leaves, and the door closes behind him.

It's that second when I flip open the book. That moment when my eyes fall on his seemingly careless, yet inexplicably uniform writing – writing which leaves me with a feeling of anticipation.

The cards he leaves inside never detail anything, much like my own. It's a game we play. Like cat and mouse; mouse and cat. We take turns; revelling in the thrill; some kind of secret indulgence we hide between the monotonous days of our lives.

Times, moments, ideas; they're all recorded on those small cards. But they're riddles. Intellectual challenges. Games.

I carefully place the card back inside the cover of the book, knowing that he did read the book, of course.

When I met him, I'd never have imagined such an extrovert to be the type of person who can lie still for hours; eyes rapidly scanning pages upon pages; nervous to read the next sentence.

But of course, appearances are all part of the game.

As I stand up and carefully brush down my coat, I know there are no crumbs.

His coffee is gone; he doesn't like to waste anything. Much less; his time. It's why he always drinks his black Italian coffee when it's hot.

My tea however; my green tea which I order week after week; still sits. It has long since become almost cold. That kind of lukewarm, when the tealeaves are resting at the bottom of the cup and the tea itself seems to have acquired a kind of cyclic pattern at its surface. What that is, I've never known. The last traces of heat linger in the porcelain of the cup.

About some things, I couldn't care less.

I drop a crisp 1000 Yen note on the table. Then, pushing the door open, I smile a little to think that he's probably already wondering whether I've deciphered his note yet. Maybe he's smiling too; smug with the knowledge that his latest riddle won't be decoded until I've drunk some of his Italian coffee; black and strong as it comes; and am sitting at the desk, ignoring the piles of paperwork, frowning at the characters on the card and tapping the tips of my fingers on the edges of the glass.

Yes, Otogi Ryuuji is smug. Smug, extroverted and cynical. He's unnerving and challenging and at first, was also unexpected and unrepenting.

He's self-conscious, careful and curious. He's mystifying and incredibly surprising, and at last, is revealing elements of his hidden character.

His is an unrealistically complex world.

He is a challenge. He is a game.

And I'm not finished playing yet.

This, like everything, has a beginning and an end.

And, Otogi Ryuuji, just as you chose to begin this game, I will choose to end it.

But not today, and not tomorrow.

And so, the game continues.

MM-


End file.
